G. H. Stone — Glacial Sediments of Maine. 127 



wliere the hill-side kames are large, a deep sheet of till lies to 

 the north of the ridges, and there is not a sign of an erosion 

 ravine. We thus see that the details of the formation of these 

 kames vary greatly. The slopes of the hills on which they 

 are situated are pretty steep — usually 100 feet or more per 

 mile. None of this kind of kames have been found on north 

 slopes. 



In Maine almost every winter there are small ridges of earth 

 formed on hillsides within the channels in the snow and ice, 

 produced by the melting water cutting down through the snow 

 into the soil. These small ridges are in several respects types 

 of the hillside kames. The latter are found in places where 

 no ordinary stream can have existed, even in time of the 

 greatest floods. The glacial origin of the hill-side kames is 

 thus made certain. Most of them were probably deposited in 

 sub-glacial channels in very late glacial time. 



3. Kames ending in marine deltas.^A. good example is 

 found in Amherst. Two short hillside kames converge 

 together at the base of the hill and expand into a plain of 

 gravel which becomes finer and more nearly horizontally strat- 

 ified as we go south and southeast. Within about one-fourth 

 of a mile the gravel passes into sand and this into clay. This 

 clay is continuous with clay containing marine fossils within a 

 mile or two of the plain. The horizontal transition of gravel 

 into sand and finally into the marine clay leads to the infer- 

 ence that the glacial streams here poured into the sea and as 

 the waters were slowly checked they dropped their burden of 

 sediment classified horizontally according to the relative veloc- 

 ities of the currents. There are many other small marine deltas 

 in the State connected at their northern ends with either 

 single kame ridges or with a plexus of reticulated ridges. 

 The' structure of the marine deltas will be referred to again.* 



* The hypothesis that the reticulated kames were deposited in the sea was first 

 published by Prof. N. S. Shaler iu 1885. That the great sand and gravel plains 

 of York and Cumberland Counties were in large part composed of matter depos- 

 ited by glacial rivers in the sea was determined by the writer independently 

 during June, July and August, 1885, while in the employ of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey, and the conclusion was set forth in administrative reports of that time. 

 That ridges of gravel are formed at the sides of swift streams entering stiller 

 water was discovered by me at the dam of the Penobscot river, at the foot of the 

 South Twin Lake in 1879, and was at once utilized in explanation of certain 

 ridges extending back from the alluvial plain of the Androscoggin River, in a 

 note on the Androscoggin glacier in the American Naturalist. But I did not 

 then discover the application of the principle to the case of the marine deltas of 

 glacial sediment. I have since discovered a fine example of gravel ridges enclos- 

 ing a kettle-hole below the dam of the Mattawamkeag River, at Kingman. No 

 one who examines these reticulated ridges below the Kingman dam can have a 

 doubt that the swift sediment-laden glacial rivers entering the sea or a lake, or 

 even a pool-like enlargement of a river channel, could form ridges enclosing ket- 

 tle-holes. In this case the kettle-holes represent unfilled space around which the 

 ridges were deposited. • In other words it is not necessary in the case of the 

 plexus of reticulated ridges that formed at the land-ward or ice-ward ends of the 



